Etiketler

Ten thoughts on the Turkish way of trolling

Michael_Rubin / Michael Rubin @mrubin1971

I’ve been writing about Turkey for more than a decade
now. It’s a beautiful country, rich in history, and a complex society but, boy,
in recent years their trolling has left a lot to be desired. It’s not just the
internet trolls who have fallen far behind but also Turkish diplomats and even
senior aides to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

(People wave Turkey's national flag during a Republic Day
ceremony in Ankara, Turkey, October 29, 2016. REUTERS/Umit Bektas.)

In the spirit of peace and brotherhood and out of my
profound respect for Turkey’s president, here’s some friendly advice:

Be consistent with your conspiracies. Who is behind
Turkey’s ills? The “interest rate lobby”? Jews? Washington think-tankers?
Alternately, you’ve blamed this humble correspondent, Henri Barkey, and a
number of other think tankers. You’ve also blamed “the media,” a “robot lobby,”
a “war lobby” and the followers of ally-turned-adversary and Islamic theologian
Fethullah Gülen. In many countries, someone who so rapidly shifts between
conspiracies would be called psychotic; in Turkey, they seem to be called
‘president.’

Turkey isn’t the world. About five years ago, Erdogan
advisors Cuneyt Zapsu and Egemen Bagis sued me to silence me. If I were a Turk,
that might work. But they should have understood first that it is harder to
intimidate people who do not live in Turkey and, second, the reaction to such
threats can be to double down on writing in order to demonstrate that bullying
doesn’t work. Also, if you’re going to sue, you’d better be right: Wikileaks
and subsequent leaks confirmed accusations of corruption, many lodged by their
colleagues in the ruling party.

What goes around, comes around. Five years ago, veteran
journalist Cengiz Çandar took to the pages of
The Guardian to castigate me for criticizing Erdogan’s crackdown on the
press. To paraphrase Çandar, Turkey arrested journalists for good reasons and
respected press freedom. “Those who argue that it is turning into a police
state are misleading world public opinion,” he declared. He then used all the
usual bells and whistles to explain to readers that Jewish writers had dual
loyalties and were working in service of Israel. Alas, the problem with
appeasing dictators is that their appetites are seldom whetted. Earlier this
year, Çandar joined the long list of purged journalists whose cases he had
previously ridiculed.

What’s the message when you respond to arguments with
insults? Let’s consider my piece on 12 questions Turkish journalists aren’t
able to ask inside Turkey. If the response to that are photos flipping me off,
tweets accusing me of (gasp!) being Jewish, or hurling expletives, then that
only convinces people reading the feed that you’re trying to change the subject
or can’t answer the questions. Erdogan may honor trolls at home, but generally
speaking, twitter trolling only works against the thin-skinned. Most serious
policy analysts recognize that insults are a sign of the weaker argument.

About that religion thing… Back to deflection. Responding
to questions by raising unrelated issues doesn’t work. For what it’s worth, I
first realized how religion obsessed Erdogan’s party was when, in 2005, they
became very upset with my expose on money laundering and illicit finance inside
Turkey. Rather than send someone from the embassy to talk with me, they found a
Turkish Jew in Washington because, it seems, Erdogan assumed all Jews know each
other. Separately, if I’m just a neocon, I’m a bad one — I haven’t been to
Israel in a decade. I go to Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia and, yes, Turkey, much
more. Why? Because I don’t generally work on Israel. Lastly, if you want to
emphasize Turkey’s religious tolerance with reference to its treatment of Jews
500 years ago, it detracts from the argument when your argument is coupled with
a sentence that begins “Why don’t you Jews…”

Blacklisting doesn’t work. The Turkish Embassy in the
United States was once among the most active in Washington, DC, but beginning
under Ambassador Nabi Sensoy in 2006 and continuing until now, the Turkish
Embassy engaged in an ever widening blacklist (acknowledged privately by its
diplomats) of anyone in Washington critical of Erdogan. Today, this means the
Turkish embassy simply doesn’t talk to anyone beyond some State Department
officials and those paid by Turkey. When I spoke before the World Affairs
Council of Houston a few years back about Turkey’s turn, it emerged that the
Turkish consulate had lobbied to disinvite me. If Erdogan believes he’s right
and his opponents are wrong, then why not convince them instead of trying to
troll and boycott? Here, Erdogan might learn some lessons from both Fethullah
Gülen and the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP). Even when people—myself
included—criticized their movements and causes repeatedly and vehemently, they
were always willing to engage personally and always kept their door open, as
was mine. Sometimes, mature people can agree to disagree.

Buying friends doesn’t work, either. Creating front
groups to lobby illegally is guaranteed to backfire. When the front group is so
inflexible that it feels forced to defend even the most ridiculous Erdogan
statement is a sure give-away that it is a fraud. By the way, this doesn’t work
either. Ultimately, this sort of thing does more to illustrate what is wrong
with Turkey than convince people that Erdogan is misunderstood.

Professionalism is important. Panels and conferences are
the bread-and-butter of Washington, DC’s think tank and academic scene. First
piece-of-advice: man-handling and assaulting audience members doesn’t really
help Turkey’s efforts to rehabilitate its image. Likewise, the
question-and-answer session after panels is for questions and answers. Turkish
diplomats, it sounds obnoxious to hear you get up and try to filibuster with
your talking points. People know Erdogan’s talking points. If they wanted to
hear them, they’d ask you to be on a panel. Save the Turkish propaganda for the
Atlantic Council’s Energy Summit. Likewise, when I spoke at the Chautauqua
Institution about Turkey in 2013, I was housed in a guesthouse with Erdogan
advisor Ibrahim Kalin. Kalin responded by giving the cold shoulder to my
18-month-old daughter. That’s not politics; that’s just being a jerk.

No, not everyone is on the take. Along the same lines. I
don’t take money from Fethullah Gülen or the Rothschild’s. Or the Free Masons.
That’s public record and easily discoverable. I criticize Turkey because I
regret its decline into darkness and renewed dictatorship. To try to defame
every critic as being on the take only reflects poorly on Turkey and its
leaders because it suggests projection: Assuming everyone else does things the
way the Turkish government now does.

If you’re going to write a hit piece, watch your sources.
Let’s put aside the silliness of trying to delegitimize a person through
personal insults rather than countering them on the facts. When you’re going to
do a hit-piece, it’s probably best not to treat an acolyte of Lyndon LaRouche
as a legitimate source unless, of course, journalists for papers seized by
Erdogan want to illustrate just how full-on conspiracy they’ve gone. What’s
next? Treat LaRouche’s “Queen Elizabeth II is a drug-smuggler” as fact?

Turkey is an important country and there’s a lot to
debate. Only the most sycophantic advisor would lead Erdogan to believe that
bilateral ties are strong or that his reputation in Washington is good. There’s a reason why ties have fallen so far,
so fast and why US officials no longer buy Turkey’s arguments. That’s because
too often Turkey is more focused on trolling than in engaging. Erdogan has no
one but himself to blame.